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Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:04 am
by Symoon
For the past 10 years, I've been working (very sparsely!) on a decoding tool for slow speed tapes.
It would have the advantage of warning signal reading errors and try to correct the small ones (both not being done when loading on a real Oric).

Never thought it would be hell like this, but the completion is near!
Still more testing required, don't hold your breath but it should'nt be another 10-years long before release now ;)

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:56 am
by Chema
Nice Symoon!!! This is great for converting games that are stored on real tapes, I guess...

Great news :)

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:59 am
by Symoon
Yes Chema, that's the only purpose ;)

Useful with real tapes only, if:
- the program was only recorded at slow speed (personal tapes, but some commercial too!)
- the fast version is faulty and there's a slow recording on the other side

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:28 am
by Godzil
There were no SLOW mode decoder?

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 7:13 pm
by Symoon
Godzil wrote:There were no SLOW mode decoder?
No.
You could use Wavclean and load the resulting WAV in Euphoric, but then had no elaborated error detection like you can have with Wav2tap for fast speed recordings.

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 9:19 pm
by coco.oric
Bravo Symoon

It's a big advance in backup of oric software

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2014 10:30 pm
by Godzil
Symoon: wow, I always thougth that the tape tools where already do this before! Good luck so :) Your software will be much appreciated :)

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 7:20 pm
by Symoon
Finally, finally, it's done ;) With the help of Fabrice of course!

Updated SourceForge with news versions and new transfer tool:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/euphor ... %20format/

Wavclean 1.5
- new signal decoding methods, designed for slow speed conversion but might be useful to fast speed too
- you can simulate a WAV speed correction if your tape player is too fast or too slow
- detailed displays available to locate an error in the WAV file (extremely verbose, several megabytes)

Wav2tap 1.2
- you can now try to decode a fast recorded program... Without synchro or header! Of course it won't load in any emulator, but this allows you to explore the content of a program that was partially deleted on tape.

Tap2wav 1.1
- bugfix: sometimes when into an infinite loop if the TAP file wasn't clean and had some extra bytes at the end. Fixed.
- a parameter now allows to add a 1.5 seconds silence at the end of the generated WAV file. This was done because some players don't play the very end of WAV files, thus the Oric program never finished loading. Now all these programs will cut is silence, not the Oric data.

Wav2taps 1.0
This is what took me soooo long: allow the decoding of slow speed recorded tapes! Only one program at time though, because of the very complicated synchronisation method due to the slow signal repeating the same bits several times.
Tries to auto-correct read errors and reports when it did.
You may have to try several Wavclean decoding methods in case of failure.

Enjoy :)
(detailed article to come in the CEO-Mag, in French but if I have time to and some are interested, I will translate)

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 8:19 pm
by Chema
This is an incredible work! And not only this, but your tool for checking tap conversions.

Congrats, Symoon. Your efforts for preserving the Oric's software catalog are invaluable!

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 10:25 am
by Godzil
Thank you Symoon :)

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 12:40 pm
by iss
Thanks, Symoon! Great tools, I compile and use them under Linux without problems.

Re: Slow speed tape conversion

Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 10:54 pm
by Symoon
Thanks guys! It's been on my hard drive for much too long, I already planned to share all this in 2007, then 2008... But Wav2taps was not ready and required Wavclean modifications.

Glad to read it works with Linux too (though, 80-90% of the code being by Fabrice, I would have bet it would ;) )